Stripping directory and filename from path as a string

Question

How can I strip the directory and filename out from a full path given to me as a string?

For example, from:

>>path_string
C:/Data/Python/Project/Test/file.txt

I want to get:

>>dir_and_file_string
Test/file.txt

I'm assuming that this is a string operation rather than a filesystem operation.

If its just string operation, just split on "/", get the last 2 elements and join them with "/" again. Or you can use `os.path.sep` as the path separator. — ghostdog74, Oct 30 '14 at 07:13
You should give some details on the origin of the base path, how platform independent you are, etc. It can be done through regular expressions or through something more OS-aware (e.g. how should it behave on a string like ``C:/Path/To/../Strange/../Folder``?) — MariusSiuram, Oct 30 '14 at 07:27

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:57

Not overly elegant, but here goes:

In [7]: path = "C:/Data/Python/Project/Test/file.txt"

In [8]: dir, filename = os.path.split(path)

In [9]: dir_and_file_string = os.path.join(os.path.split(dir)[1], filename)

In [10]: dir_and_file_string
Out[10]: 'Test/file.txt'

This is verbose, but is portable and robust.

Alternatively, you could treat this as a string operation:

In [16]: '/'.join(path.split('/')[-2:])
Out[16]: 'Test/file.txt'

but be sure to read why use os.path.join over string concatenation. For example, this fails if the path contains backslashes (which is the traditional path separator on Windows). Using os.path.sep instead of '/' won't solve this problem entirely.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 30 '14 at 07:17

1

You should use os.path.relpath

import os
full_path = "/full/path/to/file"
base_path = "/full/path"
relative_path = os.path.relpath(full_path, base_path)

answered Oct 30 '14 at 07:17

Łukasz Rogalski

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IMO for this to be a complete solution, you need to programmatically derive `base_path` from `full_path` instead of hard-coding it. – NPE Oct 30 '14 at 07:22
If you programatically derive ``base_path`` from ``full_path`` or viceversa, then you don't need to get the relative path because you programatically know it. I understand it as a good illustrative example. The question lacks some details. – MariusSiuram Oct 30 '14 at 07:25

ghostdog74 · Answer 3 · 2014-10-30T07:51:26.437

0

os.path.sep.join(path_string.split(os.path.sep)[-2:])

edited Oct 30 '14 at 07:51

answered Oct 30 '14 at 07:17

ghostdog74

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FYI: found in low quality queue. It is an answer, but consider explaining a bit. – Paul Oct 30 '14 at 07:48
lol, my answer is not as hard to read as the one with regex :) – ghostdog74 Oct 30 '14 at 07:51
Surprised no one has posted a left hand side, i.e. `(dirname, fname, ext) =` – Paul Oct 30 '14 at 07:52
Oh, there it is. d-coder has one. Not pretty though. – Paul Oct 30 '14 at 07:53
@ghostdog74 yep, regex is a bit overkill here. – Avinash Raj Oct 30 '14 at 07:55
Basically, its just basic string manipulation. No fancy magic. – ghostdog74 Oct 30 '14 at 07:55
My answer is the same as what NPE has (towards the last part). `'/'.join(path.split('/')[-2:])`, but `os.path.sep` gives you the "platform independent" path separator, supposedly. – ghostdog74 Oct 30 '14 at 07:59
Let's see, Linux uses '/' and winders uses '\' so the platform independent separator must be..... `|` :-) – Paul Oct 30 '14 at 08:00

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 30 '14 at 07:29

0

Little round about solution I guess but it works fine.

path_string = "C:/Data/Python/Project/Test/file.txt"
_,_,_,_,dir_,file1, = path_string.split("/")
dir_and_file_string = dir_+"/"+file1
print dir_and_file_string

answered Oct 30 '14 at 07:29

d-coder

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Stripping directory and filename from path as a string

4 Answers4